Alex Zanardi is a racer, a champion, and an icon to many but most of all he’s a fighter. He found fame in the 1990s as a Formula One and IndyCar racing driver, lost his legs in a horrific crash in 2001, but miraculously returned to motorsport two years later before taking up the sport of handcycling. 

Predictably, he excelled and won Gold at the London 2012 Paralympics in the men’s road time trial - and he did it again in Rio four years later. 

Alex is a model of resilience and strength in the midst of adversity. Yet, in his own words, he considers himself to be a ‘normal guy’ and a thankful one, he said in an F1 interview. Thankful “for the quantity of different things I’ve been able to fit into a single existence… including the accident and all the things I was able then to do thanks to what happened to me.” 

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Italian boy racer

Born in Bologna, Italy, in 1966, Alessandro ‘Alex’ Zanardi was the youngest of two children. His older sister, Cristina, was a talented swimmer with Olympic hopes but she died in an automobile accident at age 15. 

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“I was the crazy one, the wild one,” he said. His parents were fearful about his need for the feeling of speed. In Italy, children can drive motorbikes from the age of 14 and they worried he would crash one. On the eve of his 14th birthday, Alex’s father bought him a $500 go-cart hoping that would give him a ‘speed fix’ on the track, rather than the open road. 

It was an inspired decision. Over the next few years, Alex Zanardi became a major force on the European junior go-kart circuit. By 21, he had won the European championship and three Italian titles. The next step was Formula Three and then, like many go-kart champs, Formula One. 

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F1 and the US

His first foray into F1 was less successful than his carting career. In 1991, Alex made his F1 debut for Jordan, switching to Minardi in 1992 before signing with Lotus in 1993. But less than a year later, Lotus folded and Alex found himself without a team. He returned to the US, hoping his F1 experience would help him break into the American race car scene - and it did.

The legendary Chip Ganassi Racing Team took him on, and Alex started to compete in the US CART World Series, racing cars that looked similar to F1 cars, but raced predominantly on ovals. His career took off, and he became one of the most popular drivers on the circuit. By 1998, he was a media personality and the most successful CART driver of all time. But when Frank Williams offered him a reported $15m over three years to return to F1, he couldn’t turn it down. 

His second foray into F1, this time with the Williams team, didn’t go well. The 1999 season was a major disappointment, and he quit racing in disgust. He couldn’t stay away from the sport, however, and rejoined CART for the 2001 season. 

The race that changed his life

On September 15, 2001, Alex was driving in the American Memorial race at the Lausitz EuroSpeedway in Germany when he was involved in a truly horrific crash.

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He qualified in 22nd position, but by lap 123 he was in second place, at the heels of driver Tony Kanaan. Alex passed him for the lead. On lap 142, with 13 more to go, he made a fuel stop, came out of the pit lane, and caught the grass on the inside of the track. He lost control, spun, and ended up stranded across the track. Miraculously, Patrick Carpentier managed to avoid Alex Zanardi, but the driver behind him - Alex Tagliani - had no way of avoiding the impact. The results were tragic. Alex Zanardi lost both of his legs.

An hour later, he’d been helicoptered to Berlin and was in surgery. It was touch and go but he survived against the odds. “My heart stopped seven times. It was calculated that I managed to survive more than 15 minutes with less than a liter of blood, which scientifically is considered to be impossible,” he said, looking back in 2019.

“Scientists who study my case, still to this day, say there's either something that was missing in the equation - or this guy is dead, and he doesn't know it. But luckily, I'm here. Luckily, I was helped by a group of doctors who are the best on the planet.”

A week later, he was eased back into consciousness and learned he had lost his legs. His emotion? Joy. “I sensed the highest joy I’d ever had in my life,” he said. “The pain was incredible. I cannot describe it. But I am alive. S***, who cares about my legs? I’m alive. It was the most natural thing for me to focus on what was left rather than regret what was lost forever. I was alive, so I was very happy."
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Post-crash, and Olympic glory

Alex returned to the track in 2003 with a modified car and prosthetics of his own design. He competed in the European Touring Car championships for BMW Factory Racing and test-drove for racing teams. Meanwhile, he had already taken up another sport: para-cycling. He’d moved from one Italian sporting obsession, race cars, to another, bicycles. 

Alex’s first big success was a fourth-place finish in the New York City Marathon’s handcycle event in 2007. That spurred him on. He won the Venice Marathon in 2009 and the Rome Marathon in 2010. In 2011, he competed again in the New York City Marathon and won. He carried on for the next few years in a blaze of glory. Alex was selected for the Italian Paralympic team for London 2012 and won Gold in the men’s time trial. He successfully defended his title at Rio in 2016.

“When I crossed that line in London, ahead of everybody else, winning the Gold medal, I surprised myself by feeling a huge sense of sadness because those three years I had devoted to chasing that horizon were fantastic. It was like a boy again learning how to play with his go-kart.” 

“It was a marvellous adventure, probably one of the greatest chapters of my life. And crossing that line was completing that chapter. At that point, it hit me like thunder. I didn’t give a sh** about the Gold medal. Allow me to go through it one more time from the very beginning. I wanted to rewind it all.”
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Giving back 

A double race car champion, a double gold Olympian, and a double amputee, Alex is also a philanthropist. His charity, Associazione Alex Zanardi Bimbingamba rehabilitates and makes prosthetics for children who have lost limbs but have no access to healthcare. Many of them have been injured in war zones. He doesn’t consider himself to be a role model or deserving of any special praise, however. 

“I’m an ordinary guy,” Alex said. “But I’m fully aware that I’m a guy who is well exposed, so I inspire people because they see what I do... I’m very proud, but to be honest, if our eyes were more talented, we’d find inspiration from people all around us. We would not need Alex Zanardi to finish an ironman in under nine hours or to win a Gold medal at a sporting event, even though he has lost his legs. It would be sufficient to see a mother who gets up feeling unwell, gives her kids breakfast, takes them to school, and goes to work because she has a family to feed.”

“The example she gives may pass unnoticed but [it] is as strong as the one I deliver whenever I win a race.”

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Alex’s latest challenge 

In July 2020, while competing in the Obiettivo Tricolore Italian national road race for Paralympic athletes, he lost control of his handcycle and crashed into a truck. He was airlifted to a hospital in Siena with grave head injuries.

His family said little about his condition until a year later. His wife, Daniela, confirmed that he was no longer in a coma and was undergoing rehabilitation in a specialist clinic. While Alex could communicate, he was unable to speak. 

In December 2021, he was able to return home, however. He’d regained enough strength to wheel his wheelchair and could speak again. 

“The rehabilitation program led by doctors, physiotherapists, neuropsychologists, and speech therapists has enabled steady progress,” Daniela said in a statement, adding that setbacks can still occur. “Sometimes you also have to take two steps back in order to make one step forward. But Alex proves again and again that he is a real fighter.” 

No one doubts that, nor that Alex Zanardi is a true superhero.